Going plastics-free is as easy as calico bags and reusable coffee cups
It’s almost everywhere you look – and it’s undeniably destroying our planet. Over the past half a century, plastic has infiltrated modern life to such an extent that our oceans may have more of the stuff than fish by 2050. Once hailed as an innovation, it’s now clear that plastic is very bad news. Non-renewable fossil fuels are needed for production, belching out greenhouse gases in the process. Once tossed – often after mere minutes of use – plastic then takes hundreds of years to break down, emitting toxic methane gas as it gradually breaks into smaller and smaller pieces. The end point is too often our waterways and an estimated one million seabirds and 100,000 mammals are killed every year by marine rubbish, much of it plastics. Recycling helps, but a far more powerful solution is reducing and even eliminating single-use plastics altogether. That’s actually easier than one might think – read on for a life with less plastic.